“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “Suppose both you and your mother by any chance pass out of the picture. She’s your legal heir. Do you want control of the Wainwright Company in her hands?”

Tony went to Bessie after that, but she only laughed at him when he put the question to her.

“Divorce you?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Why? So you can marry the Morgan child, or Pat Abbott? Why should I?”

“I’m not going on with it, Bessie.”

“Oh, aren’t you!” she said, flaring with anger. “You’d better think it over. You might get an unpleasant surprise.”

“What does that mean? If it’s a threat—”

“That’s all I’m saying,” she said, more quietly. “And remember this. You haven’t got a thing on me. What’s more, since I was thrown out of here three years ago I’ve written you a dozen letters offering to come back to you, and my lawyer’s got copies of them. They’re pretty good letters, if I do say it.”

He had no belief in the surprise she threatened. He had no belief in her whatever. But his hands were tied. Not only the business. Bill Sterling had said Maud’s heart was not too good. It was no time to fight Bessie, and she knew it as well as he did. But the real change in him began at that time. His lightheartedness was gone, his boyish nonsense. He ate almost nothing, he drank more than usual, and he looked tired and depressed. He was restless, too. He would take out his car and be gone for hours.

Only one thing saved us. While the Hill disliked Bessie, she had friends in town. There were long quiet evenings when she simply disappeared, driving to the city and coming back toward morning to sleep most of the day. One of the men had to stay up to let her in, however, and what with her irregular hours and innumerable demands the servants were almost in revolt.

One day she told me she had lost five hundred dollars the night before at bridge.

“I gave a rubber check for it,” she said airily. “You might tell Maud about it. She won’t like it when it bounces.”

She had been at the Cloisters for a week or more before I had a chance to talk to Tony. Then one night, Bessie being in town again, he asked me to go for a walk.

“That is, if you can stand it,” he said. “I’m not fit company for man or beast just now.”

I went, of course. We walked down to the fountain with its floodlight and then toward the playhouse, with Roger pacing beside us. But Tony was silent and morose. He walked with his head down and his hands in his trousers pockets, until we were out of sight of the house. Then he stopped.

“See here,” he said. “I’m sorry as hell. About Bessie I mean. Mother says you didn’t know.”

“I suppose I heard it at the time. It just didn’t register.”